Blackout
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: Arthur schooled himself in wind magic, but once enmeshed in the Holy War, he begins to delve into his innate talent for thunder magic. Before long, he pushes his gifts to the limit- and starts to notice unforeseen and unpleasant side effects. Rated T for some dark subject matter and a bit of violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Blackout **

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Written for Raphiael in response to the prompt "Amnesia" for FE4/5.

A Generation 2 story for FE4 (_Seisen no Keifu_). I'm not listing the parental pairings here because most aren't important to the story and the rest are a surprise. Or obvious.

* * *

Flashes of light, like the sparks thrown off by a stoked fire, floated through Arthur's head in the moments before he opened his eyes. For a moment they still seemed to hang there in front of him, a netting of bright flecks draped across his face, but then they cleared. Arthur sat up and slid his bare feet onto the cool tile floor of his bedchamber.

Their bedchamber. Johalva was still burrowed under the blankets on the other side of the room. Like all the gang raised in Isaach, Johalva thought that the tail end of a Manster summer was unpleasantly chill. Arthur, for his part, found the crisp morning air the nicest weather he'd experienced since leaving Silesse; the winds coming down the towering mountains of Thracia felt _almost_ like the winds he'd left behind.

Arthur decided to take a walk before the sun got too high and the air warmed up. Part of it was that he wanted to feel that brisk air against his legs just then, and part of it was that his head felt strangely fuzzy despite the full night's sleep, and he wanted it cleared. The view of Manster from its city walls was a pleasant one- jagged peaks to the east, outlined by the rising sun, a soft grayish-blue sky that hinted of rain to the west, and a city of people going about their business below. Arthur liked cities best that way, at a slight remove, where the voices weren't right in his ears and elbows and feet didn't jostle him. From this height, the city just looked and smelled better and he noticed the festive decorations going up on the walls more than he did the scars and signs of decay.

When he turned up for breakfast in the Great Hall of Manster Palace, Arthur found a festival mood in progress there, too. The full moon of that September was to fall on the very day that light and dark reigned in equal measure, and both Sir Seliph's army and the people they'd liberated took this as a portent of good things to come.

Arthur glanced around the room; his sister was sitting with Prince Leif and his retinue, while Sir Seliph broke bread with Levin and his other advisors. The remainder of the girls were at one table, while the young men were likewise off on their own. Prince Ares, the so-called Black Knight, had a seat by himself, positioned where he could look out the window and have an excuse not to speak to anyone. Arthur considered doing the same, but after a last glance at the back of his sister's head, he took a chair at the table with the "young lords" of Seliph's army.

And most of them were lords, as they'd found out. Faval, heir to the duchy of Jungby, bent over a platter of sausages. Faval's cousin Lester, who'd been the presumed heir of said duchy until Faval turned up, picking bits of shell from his boiled egg. Johalva, who'd inherit the house of Dozel as soon as they'd tracked down and dealt with his brother Brian. Ulster, younger prince of Isaach through his mother. Delmud, younger prince of Nordion through _his_ mother.

And then there was Ced, who was almost certainly the heir to something but he hadn't admitted it yet. He was sitting just a little bit away from the others- not an offensive distance like Ares, but just enough to... to observe, Arthur decided. He wondered offhand if Ced also liked to take walks around the city walls to look over Manster from a height.

Arthur sat down, pushing his chair back far enough to that he and Ced made a mirror of one another across the table. The young lords appeared to all be discussing what they did back home for the harvest festival.

"In Isaach, we..."

"Mother said that in Grannvale they..."

"Here in Manster everyone..."

In Northern Thracia, people celebrated their grain, the wealth of their fertile savannas. Tinny had told him of it, of how the last stand of wheat to be cut got paraded through the streets of Alster, how they made a manikin from the bundle of stalks and gave him a seat at the high table.

In occupied Silesse they didn't celebrate the grain, because the empire took the last stand and all the rest of it too. Yet even in Arthur's village they'd had races and tournaments to celebrate the end of summer. Arthur had entered the tournament two years running; the first year he did miserably, knocked off his feet in the opening round, but the second time Arthur and his battered book of wind spells had made it to the victor's place beneath the canopy and he'd gotten a kiss from the girl who'd won the pegasus race.

"And what did you do in Silesse, Arthur?"

Delmud asked it, politely reminding everyone that Arthur had been a Silessian most of his life and didn't just belong in the box labeled "fugitive nobles of Grannvale" along with Lester and Faval and their sisters.

Arthur explained about the races, making it sound far grander than it did, leaving out that the races and the tournaments had been banned under occupation. But he remembered how they'd been when he was a little boy, and he embellished the story with details from old Tuva's tales of her girlhood in the last golden days of Crusader Ced's reign.

Once or twice, Arthur looked at the other Ced, the one across the table, to see the other man's reaction to these fabulous accounts of the pegasus races. Ced's face showed almost nothing- no suspicion, no telltale disbelief- but about halfway through Arthur's account Ced began to tap his fingers against the table. It gave Arthur the same sensation as watching sand slip through an hour-glass-_ time's up. You can stop it now._

But everyone else appeared to believe whatever Arthur told them, and once he'd finished, they went on happily to the topic of what they could do this particular holiday in the free and grateful city of Manster.

"On the equinox, spirits are supposed to pass freely from their world into ours," said a wide-eyed Ulster. "In Isaach, we always had our fortunes for the season told."

"There's a fortune-teller down in the town square by the pawn shop," said Faval. "I oughta go to him. Maybe he can tell me where mum went and who our dad was."

"Oh, those old charlatans don't know anything," replied Lester. "Mother said they all have tricks to make you think they're seeing the future, but none of these market-square seers are holy men. You'd be better off finding a priest."

"You're in Manster," Faval replied with a jaded air. "Honest priests got run out of here a long time ago. You should come with me, Lester."

"Me? I don't need to ask some old fraud about my parents. Mother's safe in Tirnanogue and Father died at Barhara protecting her."

Arthur watched the antics of the cousins feeling more than a little jaded himself... but he did notice Delmud rolling his eyes at Lester's statement. It stayed with him even after the rest of the morning's conversation faded from his mind.

-x-

Arthur did notice that Ced didn't say a thing about whatever childhood celebrations he'd enjoyed at harvest time. Ced spoke only of what people in Manster did when they weren't being rounded up by imperial troops. Typical Ced, Arthur thought, for all that he'd known the man for less than a week. They'd found him _in_ Manster, and he dressed like the people of Manster and halfway talked like it, but he wasn't _from_ there. The citizens there in Manster called him "Ced the Hero" while their hero merely called himself Ced and gave evasive responses about who and what he was if anyone asked.

Arthur kept an eye on the green-haired sage (such an unconvincing Thracian he made with that hair!) for some time that day, and was more than a little pleased to learn that Ced did, indeed, go for walks on the city walls. It made a good place to corner Ced, though the sage didn't seem in the least rattled when Arthur called out to him.

"What's your game?"

"I don't play games."

There was something wrong with one of his eyes, something disconcerting about it that made Arthur not want to look too closely.

"You're not fooling me. You can't have fooled anyone- nobody in this place would name their kid after the Silessian wind god."

"Nobody?" Ced smiled a little at Arthur's words. "I'd say it's about as likely as a Silessian youth with a name more common in these parts."

"My mum was from Grannvale."

"Obviously." And Ced gestured towards the pale hair that cascaded well past Arthur's shoulders.

"So what are you, then? A man with a Silessian name and knowledge of Silessian magic who turns up here at the far edges of the empire?"

"I was looking for someone and ended up here," replied Ced. "I'm told you were also looking for someone close to you... and ended up here."

Ced's eyes were two fingers lower than Arthur's but Ced had that disconcerting... _thing_ in his eye. Arthur looked away first, and Ced took that opportunity to leave.

-x-

Prince Leif stole Tinny at dinnertime, too, so Arthur joined the young lords yet again. The evening meal wasn't nearly as festive as the morning had been; Ulster slouched at the end of the table with a pale, blotched face and red eyes.

"What's with him?" Arthur whispered to Johalva.

"He went to see the fortune-teller to find out if he had a chance with Miss Julia," Johalva replied. "Heard instead that his mother's been dead all this time."

"Ah."

Arthur looked on as Delmud and Lester both attempted to comfort their friend; for his own part, Arthur felt profoundly unmoved by Ulster's sorrow. Wasn't it Ulster's own fault for hoping against hope that his mother was alive? Or his own fault for going to see the "market-square seer" and trying to divine his future? Ulster ought to be glad he had a healthy, pretty sister and an elder cousin who looked out for them both.

Arthur heard Ulster moan, "How'm I going to tell Larcei?" as he ceased to pay attention to anything going on at that end of the table. Nobody- not Faval, not even Johalva- was in a lighthearted mood that night, and at the end of the meal they all drifted away, silent as cats.

Yet, as he turned to go, Arthur felt a tug upon his sleeve. He looked down to see a quiff of dark blond hair and a pair of brown eyes.

"Hey, Del."

"Do you want to take a walk?" asked the prince of Nordion. "I'd go back to the room with Ulster, but I don't know how much more to say to him."

The idea of another brisk walk through the evening air sounded good to Arthur, and besides that, he'd noticed the spots of light in front of his eyes at dinner. Maybe a good walk would tire him out to the point where he had some proper sleep...

"Yeah, that's rough," was what he said to Delmud by way of agreement. "You got some bad news about your mum recently, too."

"Lost in the desert? Yeah. But Lewyn told me afterward that she's not dead... just in some place where we can't reach her." Delmud looked remarkably unbruised by the news. "I just have the feeling I'll see her again. Here in this world, I mean, not like..."

"Lucky you." The words came out sour, but Arthur couldn't help himself. The look Delmud shot him in return was so empathetic that Arthur decide to accept the silent apology that Del offered, and instead of heading off alone into the dark, Arthur decided to keep their conversation going.

"What's that funny look you get on your face whenever Lester goes on about his dad the chivalrous bow knight?"

"Oh, that." Delmud brushed at a stray lock of hair with the back of his hand. "I guess 'funny' is the word for it, but I remember once long ago, I heard Shanan and Oifaye talking about how weird it was that Lester looked so much like Lex of Dozel."

"Lex?"

"Yeah. He was one of the Grannvale nobles with Sir Sigurd. I remember hearing he was a friend of your mother's- him and Lord Azel of Velthomer. They all knew each other way back when. Come to think of it, he'd be Johalva's uncle, too."

"Is that so? Did he get blasted at Barhara with the rest of them?" asked Arthur, interest piqued by the reference to his own mother.

"No. Mother Aideen said that Lex and his sweetheart left before then, right around the time your mother and Lady Fury went to Silesse. So maybe he's out there somewhere, and Lester doesn't know it."

"Heh. It wouldn't be the first time somebody got their world turned upside down." This idea did not bother Arthur in the least.

"And it won't be the last," Delmud agreed, once more seeming content with it all. "Are you okay, Arthur? You've seemed a bit off since we got to Manster."

"Oh, so that's why you're sticking around to talk to me. Yeah, I'm fine. Maybe I could do with sleeping better."

"Ah. Yes, we've seen you dropping out in conversations a couple of times this last week."

"You have?"

"Not often," Delmud said quickly. "Just a few times, you didn't seem to be following us."

"Right. Thanks for your concern, Delmud. I'll try to... not do that."

As much as that conversation set Arthur on edge, he seemed to sleep normally that night. The sparks of light weren't there when he woke in the morning, and Delmud and the rest didn't act as though anything were amiss with Arthur at breakfast.

Then again... how would Arthur know, exactly?

"I'm going down to the arena today," he announced to the rest. "Anyone else want to come?"

"Sure," said Faval with a yawn. "Need the money, again..."

Faval burned through money like mad, though most of it went to keep the holy bow he'd inherited from his mother in good repair. Only Prince Ares went through money faster, as far as Arthur could tell.

In truth, Arthur didn't need the money. His Wind and Thunder tomes never cost a lot to get repaired, and he'd cleaned up at the arenas in Melgen and Alster. But something in Arthur made him want to prove himself, to prove he'd come just fine out of their last string of battles, that he wasn't "off."

Ced, though, showed him that little smile again.

"Not quite the same as the harvest tournaments back home, is it?"

"Hell, no," Arthur replied. "Going to give it a shot today?"

"I might," Ced admitted.

"Great. Meet you at the gates in an hour, then."

He was only a little surprised that Ced kept the appointment. As they waited for their turns in the ring, Ced brought up the harvest tournaments again, but this time he was serious. Arthur, half-hoping to trap Ced into an admission of his secret identity, spoke freely of the tournaments he'd actually been in- not massive festivals with prizes of silver and gold, but vicious matches against some truly shady opponents, some of whom used _dark_ magic.

"I'm not even sure how I got to the final round last year. Every time I was about to lose and go down, my opponent would just... miss. Sometimes a couple of shots in a row; it was like being on the verge of defeat gave me the strength to make me untouchable, and then I'd let them have it."

"Really."

"Yeah. And the last guy I dealt with was a real son of a... well, he had a Hel tome under his cloak. You know that one?"

"I don't _practice_ it," corrected Ced. "But I know of it, yes."

"Yeah, well that one left me basically dead. I was down on my knees with this dark mist closing in around me..."

It took only a little effort to push himself back to that moment, of being there in the hard-packed dirt of the ring, head lolling to the side as his leaden limbs refused to obey any commands. Arthur could still feel the _hate_ in the words that had popped into his head then.

_Not today. I've come too far. Not this time, you smirking bastard. _

He remembered the surge of energy that filled him then, remembered rising up from the ring with his tome clenched in a death-grip even as his sneaking adversary brought out the Elwind tome that was supposed to be his legitimate weapon in the match. The green waves flowed around Arthur, rustling his clothes without touching his flesh, and Arthur had enough time to see the shock in his opponent's eyes before he unleashed a return volley that took his opponent clear out of the ring, out of the match...

"I damn near killed him. After that, I knew I was ready to go out and find my family."

"Is that so?"

Ced actually looked impressed. Or disturbed. Arthur couldn't tell, and he still didn't want to look too closely at that oddly green damaged eye.

-x-

He'd miscalculated. This swordmaster was going to cleave Arthur in two with the broad silver blade. They'd take him back to Tinny in pieces.

Arthur managed to swerve away from Xenon's next strike, but he'd already lost enough blood to be dizzy, and his opponent was _fast_... and surprisingly strong. Even when Arthur struck him with a bolt of Thunder that should've laid the man out, Xenon kept on his feet, kept dancing. His resilience enraged Arthur.

"Come on and get me!" he shouted.

Xenon did, knocking Arthur back with a blow that left him dazed and bent double. It didn't hurt as much as it _should've_... always a bad sign.

"Feh." Arthur tasted blood in his mouth. "I wanted you to do that."

And, in spite of the pain rippling down one side, he managed to stand up straight with his shoulders back.

"You see, I fight better when I'm angry."

Xenon's blade should've finished Arthur off, but the silver edge caught only empty air, and then a massive blast of Thunder magic illuminated the entire arena. When the light dimmed, Xenon was the one hauled away for healing.

Not that Arthur was in much better shape. He raised his arm to the roars of the crowd, but he couldn't really see any of his audience. Blotches of pale light in front of his eyes made it impossible to see anything, and he stumbled back as the pain returned to overwhelm him.

Someone caught him, someone with a healing staff to patch up the wounds in his arm and his side.

"Ced?"

The healing didn't help the spots in his vision.

"Good, you're awake."

"I've been awake the whole time."

"No. You lost consciousness for a few moments there."

"Mm." Arthur thought his right eye had better vision than the left. "I didn't notice."

"That's what worries me. What were you doing there?"

"Winning."

He won four thousand in gold and the arena boss's admonition to not come back. That made thirteen thousand and five hundred pieces of gold earned in one morning- not bad, considering. Arthur did not, however, ask what Ced had won, or how easily he'd won it.

Especially not after Ced mother-henned him all the way back to the palace and insisted Arthur go straight to bed.

"Hey, leave me alone. I've done this before."

"I hope not," Ced replied as he propelled Arthur into the door of the bedroom.

"I'm glad Johalva isn't here to see you doing this," said Arthur.

"Do you seriously not understand what you're doing to yourself? Allowing yourself to be beaten down to the edge of death just to channel more power than you can handle isn't a battle strategy."

"I understand just fine. I've been doing this for years. Like I told Xenon, I have strength in my anger." He really did want to lay down, but Arthur wasn't even going to think of it until Ced left him alone.

"That's not the way." Sometimes Arthur found it hard to believe that he and Ced were the same age- especially when Ced was acting like this, stone-faced and making pronouncements like a high priest. "Wind magic is inherently less destructive to the user than fire or thunder magic. What you could do as a student with an elementary wind spell you can't do with Elthunder!"

"I _am_ using elementary magic. Elthunder is Tinny's specialty." And his mother's Thoron tome was beyond him at present, not that Arthur planned to admit it.

"It's still thunder magic. Fire and thunder are not your friends- it's no accident that Valflame and Mjolnir are both in the hands of our enemies."

"How can you be so sure, Ced the Hero? I mean, Ced the Liar."

"I'm not lying."

The defensive edge to his voice did Arthur some good.

"You're not telling the truth, either. That green flash in your eye is the holy mark of Forseti. You're the prince of Silesse." Ced didn't protest it, didn't deny it, but the downturn of his mouth gave everything away. "I don't know where you're hiding the tome, but I already figured out that your heroic feats were possible thanks to Forseti's powers. I've seen every kind of wind magic there is- except that- and nothing I've seen matches up to the stories about your single-handed defense of the gates of Manster. Nothing else makes the sky turn green."

Arthur meant to stay on his feet until Ced got the hell out of his room, but suddenly he was sprawled on the bed with one boot on, one boot off, and his hair tangled all around him. The sparks were going off in his eyes again.

"I want to sleep now," he said, and rolled away so he wasn't facing Ced anymore. Still, he couldn't escape the range of Sety's voice.

"We're not here by accident, Arthur. We're holy warriors- Sir Seliph, Prince Leif and Prince Ares, you, me, the Jungbys, Johalva, Prince Shanan and his cousins. Each of us has been blessed with the talents we need to see this war through and to liberate Jugdral from Southern Thracia to Upper Silesse. But our enemies have talents, too... and these gifts can destroy us, corrupting us as our enemies have been corrupted."

Arthur closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, but Ced had one more piece of advice for him.

"Don't fight with your anger, Arthur."

Arthur remained where he was, eyes shut tight, until long after the sound of Ced's footsteps faded away.

**To Be Continued**


	2. Chapter 2

**Blackout **

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

Author's note: _I have chosen to use the more conventional "Thoron" for the tome also called "Tron" and have decided to resolve the "Ethnia paradox" by making the "Queen Ethnia of Alster" mentioned outside FE4 as the same person as the Ethnia who is Tiltyu and Blume's sister in FE4. In a continuity where Arthur and Tinny were born, Linda and Amid weren't born and Ethnia had Miranda from FE5 instead. That's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it._

_Chapter Two_

The upside of being on bed rest for the remainder of the day was that Tinny broke away from the attentions of Prince Leif and spent her time cosseting Arthur instead. She had the cooks of Manster Palace make something close to the thin Silessian pancakes that Arthur liked to eat with berries and cream. As Arthur was in fact quite hungry after his exploits in the arena that morning, he polished the pancakes off without any trouble and then spent a while just relaxing in Tinny's company. Nobody bothered them- not Johalva, not Prince Leif, and not Ced the Hero. Tinny had only good things to say about Arthur's success against Xenon and his other opponents, and for a time Arthur felt that the entire adventure was probably worth it.

Only after some time did Arthur squint up at his sister and notice that the bright ribbons woven through her two long plaits weren't the right color. Instead of the red of House Freege, they were blue- the same shade as the flag of Leonster. Was she changing her hair ribbons to please Leif now?

"So what have you been up to with His Highness?"

"I haven't been doing anything with Sir Seliph," said Tinny, her eyes gone wide in surprise at Arthur's question.

"Not him. I mean Seliph's cousin."

"Oh. Well... I've been helping Prince Leif study thunder magic, and we've both been going over healing magic together with Princess Nanna."

"So how's that going?"

"It's fine. Leif is very determined." A little blush of pink crept into her cheeks and then she added, "He's been teaching me how to use a sword."

"I bet he has."

Arthur might not have grown up with a gaggle of girls around him like _some people_, but he wasn't stupid. Sword practice might mean actually practicing fighting skills, but in Sir Seliph's army it was just as likely to mean something else entirely. And having Delmud's sister Nanna in the mix didn't reassure Arthur any; they'd all taken her for Leif's girlfriend at first, but instead there was something else going on there. The whole scene around Leonster was weird to Arthur, and now his sister was in the thick of it.

"It's not like that!" Tinny squeaked, and Arthur decided to believe her. For now.

-x-

Arthur wanted a bath in the morning, wanted to get the grime and traces of blood off his body. Manster had nothing like a Silessian bathhouse where Arthur could use the heat of a fragrant wood fire to sweat out the filth, but the servants were willing to make the effort to draw a hot bath to please Lord Arthur. Being the grandson of a treacherous duke (dead), the nephew of an evil king (also dead), and the son of Lady Tiltyu (still dead) could get Arthur something close to what he wanted, even if trading on his bloodline made him disgusted. Why any of these people would want to curry favor with someone related to King Blume was past Arthur's ability to reckon. He sat in the bath, immersed up to his chin in water that turned his skin a bright pink, and wondered why being part of Sir Seliph's quest wasn't enough on its own.

By the time he reached the Great Hall, most of the "young lords" were gone and only Faval lingered over breakfast. The sniper had apparently not learned from Ulster's hard lesson, because he'd gone and done something equally silly with the very same fortune-teller.

"Yeah. Found out my dad was the Prince of Verdane."

"What's that mean?" Arthur wasn't completely ignorant of Verdane and its significance, but he liked to make clear that _he_ wasn't obsessed with political nonsense from a generation ago.

"Well, he died at Barhara with Sir Sigurd, which is kind of crappy because I wanted to meet him. And now Lewyn says I'm going to have to reclaim Verdane when all this is over. I guess Patty gets Jungby now."

"I'm sure Patty's thrilled," said Arthur. Faval's younger sister kept trying to find someone with money and a title who would marry her and set her up for life, so being a great lady of Grannvale should suit her just fine.

"Yeah. She says she'll never have to scrounge up bread money again." Faval shook his head at this turn of events. "You oughta see that guy, Arthur. Lester was full of it when he said the old man was a phony. He knew way too much to be faking it."

"Why would I want to seek out information that could possibly ruin my life?"

So Arthur ended the conversation, took away the remains of his breakfast, and left Prince Faval the uncrowned king of the mysterious land of Verdane to his destiny.

-x-

As Arthur walked to the training yard, he caught sight of two plaits of pale hair- almost blue-white beneath the sun- wrapped in bright ribbons. Tinny and Prince Leif were, indeed, training with swords; she had the lightweight sword preferred by ladies and the prince was using a blade passed down from his mother that cast light magic from a distance. Arthur watched them out of the corner of his eye as he passed, though he didn't stop.

Prince Leif had three apparent ambitions. One, it was his destiny to rule all of Thracia and he was going to do it. Two, he was going to master every type of weapon and form of magic, except the forbidden spells. Three, he was going to marry Tinny and make her queen of this imaginary kingdom of Thracia that currently consisted of the five cities that Sir Seliph's army had liberated- Manster, Conote, Melgen, Alster, and Leif's native Leonster. The first two were obvious to everyone in the army, and as for the third... Arthur just knew. Leif had swooped in on Tinny almost from the moment they set eyes on one another in Alster. He already _had_ a pretty golden-haired princess at his side, but Leif called Nanna "little sister" and the way he talked to her wasn't the way he talked to Tinny... not at all. But Tinny hadn't protested over the attention, so Arthur let it go... for _now_, anyway.

Arthur forced his thoughts away from the subject of Prince Leif and on to the tome beneath his arm. His mother had carried it during her days in Sir Sigurd's army, and out of everything in his possession Arthur felt that this Thoron tome was possibly the most precious- that and the pendant that his mum had slipped about his neck during the last holiday they spent together. Arthur no doubt that the tome that they'd taken from Prince Ishtor's dead hands had belonged to his mother. It didn't just feel right and smell right; he recognized her own hand-writing in the margins of the pages. Scribbled comments, tips and tricks... and names, doodles, little drawings. There weren't enough words that he could recapture the sound of his mum's voice, but when he looked at her little sketches of birds, at the page where she'd written their interlocked names- _Tiltyu, Arthur, Tinny_- he felt her presence. He could at least hear her laugh, hear wordless singing, almost like birdsong itself, but better.

Arthur wondered if Ulster was right, and spirits would be passing through to their world that night, when the sun went down and the moon rose golden and full. He wondered if his mum would be with them. But for now, he settled down under a tree to protect the tome's pages from the bright autumn sunlight and studied the words his mother learned in another time and place.

-x-

The ghost of Lady Tiltyu didn't come to either Arthur or Tinny that evening. Arthur faced additional disappointment in the weeks ahead. He hadn't mastered Thoron- hadn't come close it it, really- by the time Thracia's King Trabant launched a serious attack on them, but Arthur wasn't bothered by that. He expected the dragon knights of Thracia would give him the chance to really let his prowess with wind magic shine. He wasn't deliberately not using Thunder because Ced told him it was dangerous; there just wasn't any reason to favor Thunder when Wind could cut the bastards down as well or better. He didn't fare as well as he'd hoped to, though, because Thracia's winged troops steered clear of everything that even looked like a mage and targeted the cavalry they thought to be easy pickings.

A pile of dead Thracians later, Arthur had his revelation.

"That's it. If I were on horseback, flashing a sword at my enemies and unleashing Thunder on them when they least expect it... I could really do some damage."

"You could, maybe," said Tinny, but Arthur recognized the doubt in her voice. "You'd have to learn to ride to do it, though."

"I can ride." By which Arthur meant that he could sit on a horse without falling off.

"That's not the same as knowing how to fight on horseback. I've watched Leif and how he struggles with it."

"He's mad. He's trying to learn mounted axe-throwing, mounted archery, and everything else at one time. I'm pretty sure I can perform an incantation from the saddle and have it go where it's supposed to."

Tinny thought it over, and Arthur was struck by how very _sweet_ she looked when contemplating something. No wonder opponents underestimated what she could do with her Elthunder spell.

"If you really want to learn," she said in the end, "Sir Finn could teach you. He's been helping Leif... and Finn learned from Leif's father, and everyone says Prince Quan was the best horseman on the continent."

"Everyone here in _Thracia_ says that. Sir Seliph's friends all say his father Sir Sigurd was the best."

"And Prince Aless says his father King Eldigan was even better," she replied. "But since none of them are here, you might as well try learning from Finn."

-x-

Arthur might have gone off on his own to learn riding, much in the same way he'd mastered wind magic on his own after Granny Tuva showed him the basics. But he didn't want to disappoint his sister and so did seek out the knight who'd served as Prince Leif's guardian before Leif was of the age to fight. After a brief period of friction in which Arthur did his best to get across to the older man that he didn't want to be called "Lord Arthur" at any point in time, followed by a longer period of humiliation that consisted of being knocked into the dust repeatedly by the sandbag at the end of the quintain (or having a tun of cold water dumped over him, which was worse), Arthur began to feel he actually did have the knack for mounted combat. He felt a genuine connection to the horse he'd been loaned, which surprised Arthur as he hadn't really liked Mahnya, the pegasus that had taken him from Silesse to Isaach. Combing down his mare at the beginning of each riding lesson became something to look forward to, and Arthur began sneaking in bits of carrot and apple in hopes his horse would like him even more.

"How long can a horse fight?" he asked Finn one morning as they were getting ready for practice.

"A horse can work for twenty years and more, if it's cared for properly," said Finn. "Some knights take pride in riding a single horse through the whole of their career. Your Embarr is already fifteen, so I wouldn't count on doing so yourself."

"Maybe I'm counting on a brief career," Arthur said. His sense of humor, too dark for most of his acquaintances, often misfired and it did now. Finn just acted as though he hadn't heard Arthur speak and they went on with the lesson.

At the end of the day, though, when Arthur was checking Embarr over for sores and burrs, Finn opened up a conversation Arthur hadn't expected.

"Arthur... do you know how your mother died?"

"My dear aunt and uncle ran her into the grave by being horrible to her." That's what Tinny had said, anyway.

"That's part of the story," Finn said. Arthur had been searching through his pockets for one more treat to slip to Embarr, but something in the tone of Finn's voice made Arthur stand up and take notice. "At the time she and your sister were brought to Alster, it still had a degree of independence from the empire. Your mother's sister Ethnia was married to Alster's king, and under her, and the vulnerable enjoyed some protection thanks to her. Queen Ethnia also extended her aid to those of us fled from Leonster, Manster, and Conote as each of them fell. Prince Leif and I were among those sheltered in her court."

This was news to Arthur.

"Did you see mum there?"

"Only once, and then briefly." Finn seemed to be on the verge of saying more, but then he closed his eyes and said instead, "I don't have any pleasant memories from that time to share with you, Arthur."

Conversations with Finn always were a little odd, which might've been the reason Arthur had never sought the knight out before riding lessons came into it. In a way, it reminded Arthur of trying to talk with Ced. There was this feeling of stepping cautiously across a sheet of ice, not knowing what might be underneath if the ice cracked.

But since Finn had decided to open up about a part of Tiltyu's life that Tinny was too young to remember well, Arthur was hanging on to every word.

"In the autumn of 765, when your mother had been in Alster for less than a year, those of us who supported Prince Leif made the attempt to assassinate King Blume when he visited the city."

"I like that goal," said Arthur, but Finn shook his head at the comment.

"We failed, and in that failure, we brought down all who'd aided us. Alster's king was executed. Queen Ethnia was sent to a convent where she shortly died, leaving a young daughter brought up in cruel circumstances. As for Tiltyu, with her sister gone and King Blume and Queen Hilda now ruling from Alster, her rooms at Alster became her prison. She gave way to despair, and in the end used her magic to take her own life."

Now that he thought about it, Arthur recalled that he'd heard hints of this before, but no one had put it so bluntly to him.

"I didn't know that was possible... to kill yourself with magic on purpose."

"Your mother had a peculiar gift by which her power could be be fueled by strong emotions- anger, hatred, desperation. Not happiness, strangely enough. But she turned that gift against herself in order to escape the hell that King Blume and Hilda created for her."

And that was it. A lengthy silence followed while Arthur pondered how on earth to respond.

"I inherited that," he said in the end. "That ability, I mean."

"So did your sister."

Arthur felt a little confused then, wondering if Finn was trying to tell him something without saying it, something awful about Tinny... or something about Arthur himself. Maybe Finn was trying to warn him away from Thoron and the more powerful branches of thunder magic? Why not just tell him, then?

"You were telling me that to apologize, weren't you?" Arthur ventured. "For being a part of the plot that should've taken out Blume and killed mum instead."

And it seemed to Arthur that, for the first time in the conversation, Finn was quite deliberately looking away from him, not making eye contact... trying not to go any further.

"Some failings go beyond the reach of any apology. We can only do our best to make amends."

"Don't worry about it. It was Hilda that drove mum over the edge. Like I said... any plot to kill Blume sounds like a good idea to me. I'd have wanted to help."

Finn turned back toward Arthur, and a slow but genuine smile warmed his normally austere features.

"You'd have been all of six years old."

And that was the end of the day's lesson. Though, as Arthur mulled over the concept of "making amends," he thought he'd figured out why Prince Leif had started this ardent, unswerving courtship of Tinny from the moment they laid eyes on one another.

"I guess he thinks making her his queen is the best he can do for her, given it was for his sake the whole fiasco happened in the first place."

Arthur felt he had to know several better ways to do right by a girl, but the only thing that came to mind just then was "Leave her be."

-x-

Thracia turned out to be packed with surprises. King Trabant basically committed suicide when he left his holy weapon at home before attacking Sir Seliph's army. Arthur, still not ready to ride into battle, got to watch Prince Leif and Finn pick Trabant apart. Then one of the dragon knights who kept menacing them turned out to be King Trabant's daughter, who was actually Prince Leif's sister, who'd been kidnapped and raised under false circumstances but was now willing to join them now that Trabant was dead. Also joining the fold was General Hannibal of Thracia, who'd turned against Trabant when the king imprisoned _his _son, who'd been freed by Seliph, and then to top it all off the meek fair-haired boy named Corple turned out to be the _true_ son of the long-gone Lex of Dozel.

"He doesn't look anything like Lester," Arthur said to Delmud of the discovery when they were alone in the training grounds of the captured castle of Grutia. He'd graduated from riding against the quintain to riding against actual opponents, and Delmud was letting Arthur have it with a sword that cast thunder magic.

"He doesn't look anything like Lex, from what Lewyn said. But Lewyn's never been wrong before..."

Delmud placed utter trust in the pronouncements of the tactician; Arthur figured that Delmud _had_ to, given that Lewyn's word was the only evidence Delmud had that his mother was still alive.

Arthur hoped Lewyn was right. The name of Lex of Dozel had been scribbled in the margins of a few of Thoron's well-worn pages, and Arthur had a deep-seated doubt that maybe Lex had been more than a little friendly with Arthur's mum before he skipped off with his sweetheart. "Sword practice," again, no doubt. Or axe practice. But if Lewyn said otherwise, Arthur was happy to believe the man.

**To Be Continued**


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

Arthur saw the amber whirlwind bearing down upon him. For a moment, it looked to be coming at him so slowly that it he would have time to simply step out of its path, yet an eye-blink later the force of Tornado was tearing at his clothes and his hair and Arthur had to leap away before it enveloped him. No sooner did his boots touch the floor than Arthur pivoted to aim a return volley at Ced. He could feel the energy of Thoron coursing through his body, down his arms and out his fingers; he could sense the power in the trail of azure light he sent down the gallery at his opponent. Then the spell manifested like a flower burst into bloom and formed a crackling ball of energy that nearly obliterated Ced's form.

Arthur watched until the light faded; he saw dark streaks before his eyes for a moment, like bare branches against the sky at dusk.

"I think you have it," said Ced, and Arthur was pleased to his see opponent actually sweating.

Then again, Ced had restrained himself. As powerful a spell as Tornado was, it was nothing compared to Forseti's full power. And really, the heir to the wind god had as little to fear from thunder magic as anyone on earth. A little exercise in the ornate training hall of Pereluke wasn't going to do him any harm.

"Let's try it one more time," said Arthur.

It went just like they'd rehearsed it; they paced off as though dueling and Arthur waited as Ced used his powers to summon up a luminous storm. This time, Arthur didn't dodge. He stood his ground and let his body feel the full impact of Tornado. Wind magic didn't singe or sear, it smothered; the air went out of Arthur's lungs as tears welled in his eyes, and it was a battle just to remain upright. As the power of the spell began to overwhelm him, Arthur felt something inside of him _give_, like a geyser bursting out of the ground. Arthur used all the force at his command to send a trail of crackling light in Ced's direction. Thoron exploded, twice as large and twice as loud as it had been, almost too bright to look upon. Arthur looked anyway.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he heard Ced say.

Arthur blinked; he could still see flickering bits of light drifting across his eyes. But Ced didn't seem to be hurt... just annoyed with Arthur for exploiting his perverse gift.

"I'm healing you because turning a negligent eye to your health would be unethical." Ced sounded like an old hen as he reached for his staff. "Honestly I think you ought to spend the rest of the day half-suffocated so it sinks in just how stupid you're being."

"Thanks again," Arthur said with feigned brightness. He hadn't realized how little air was reaching his lungs until Ced restored him back to something approaching normal health. He closed his eyes, intending to rest for just a few moments. Flakes of gold and azure sparkled before him in the darkness and and the next thing he knew Ced was shaking him.

"Arthur, come out of it!"

"Huh?" He looked up into Ced's somber face. "I don't-"

"_Please stop_."

There was something in Ced's voice, something in the pressure of his hand upon Arthur's arm, that made Arthur go very still.

"You're starting to frighten _me_ now," he said, and deliberately removed his arm from Ced's grasp.

Ced grimaced, and Arthur thought he could hear the great heir of Forseti grinding his teeth, but before Ced could say anything more they both turned their heads toward the sound of frantic footsteps. It was Ced's sister Fee, running up to them with the word that Julia had gone missing.

-x-

"You know she didn't disappear on her own," Ced shouted over his shoulder as they made a mad dash through the desolate streets of Pereluke.

"Yeah." Julia wasn't impulsive. She didn't sneak out of camp for fun, didn't go wandering for the sake of wandering, didn't like being anywhere Sir Seliph wasn't. "There's always been something weird going on with her, though. Didn't your old man basically palm her off on Sir Seliph?"

Ced muttered _something_ in reply, but Arthur didn't hear it. It was like a thunderclap went off in his head, with no warning; Arthur reached for the walls as fragments of light swam around behind his eyelids. All his senses were a jumble in that moment; he was tasting sounds and hearing light and seeing the color of his own pain, and when the whole horrid experience faded to dull darkness he was mostly just aware of the pounding of his heart.

"Arthur?"

It might have been Ced. Whoever it was, they sounded scared.

"Damn it."

He could talk, at least.

"Arthur..."

Ced did manage to retreat behind the mask of the imperturbably heroic sage of the winds by the time Arthur could see clearly again.

"I guess I won't be much help in finding Miss Julia," Arthur said to Delmud as the amiable prince of Nordion ferried him to the castle on horseback.

"You'll be even less help when you're dead," said Delmud, unruffled as ever.

For some reason that cut deeper than all Ced's warnings. Arthur recovered by nightfall, but he kept with him the sense that, if he _hadn't_, they'd all have rolled him into Pereluke's crypt and gone on their way regardless.

-x-

Julia's disappearance meant the end of the brief holiday in their campaign. Pereluke had been a nice change of scene after the endless slog through Thracia, though Arthur was glad to be there in the winter, when the air felt almost like summer in Silesse. He had reasons to look forward to being on the march again, though. He was riding in style now for one thing, as Sir Seliph had given him Embarr for keeps and Lewyn declared him an actual knight. Now Arthur could keep up with the glamorous likes of Ares the Black Prince, and to cut a similarly impressive figure Arthur outfitted his steed in fine new trappings of the same brilliant blue as the light cast by Thoron.

From his new grand perch on Embarr, Arthur lifted his keepsake tome to the heavens.

"Do you see me, Mother? This is yours... and I'll use it to bring down Hilda and send her where she belongs."

"Ahhh."

Arthur had attracted an admirer, though his admirer was probably biased; it was Tinny gazing up at him with her sky-colored eyes.

"You look so beautiful."

"Heh. Thanks?"

And there, popping up behind Tinny, was Leif in his crimson-lined mantle, brandishing a very fine sword.

"Eh?" Arthur didn't understand the display at first.

"Arthur... this sword served me well during our battles in Thracia. I'd like you to have it."

"Your Brave Sword?"

Arthur knew there weren't many of that make extant; this particular sword had been presented to Sir Seliph by Faval's sticky-fingered sister, who'd likely filched it out of some tomb or temple. Then it went from Seliph to his beloved cousin Leif, and for it now to pass to Arthur's hands... well, it was definitely a sign of esteem. Or was it? Arthur looked down at the two of them- Leif with his white armor that matched his new white charger, Tinny in a dress the color of violets, a shade partway between Freege scarlet and Leonster blue. He wondered if the gift were intended as Tinny's bride-price.

"Thanks," he said aloud. "I'll take good care of it."

He'd clean it up nicely after he'd coated its blade in Hilda's dark blood.

-x-

Arthur didn't have the chance to use Thoron or anything else against Hilda. Leif got to her first with his silver arrows, and even as Arthur rode up he saw a column of magic rise above the battlements of Chronos as Hilda warped herself away- to the safety of Prince Julius and his dark powers, they guessed. Alive or not, Hilda was out of their hair for the moment. Leif credited his easy victory to Tinny's loving support, and Arthur decided to accept this sop to family pride and let Tinny take joint credit for downing the vicious queen... for now.

They were married that evening, by candlelight, in just a little "family" gathering instead of a grand party for all their army like the night Prince Shanan married Larcei. Leif promised Tinny that they'd do something special when they got home to Alster, have a celebration to lighten the hearts of their people. Arthur for his part found he was mostly relieved to have the union official, especially with Leif's "beloved sister" Nanna turning up hand-in-hand with Prince Ares.

"It's a strange thing to see a little sister married," said Ced, as they retired to their room just after midnight. The room assignments shuffled around during the course of the campaign, as Lewyn deemed Ced a better "fit" for Arthur's company than Johalva. "Especially when you have to give her away because your father won't acknowledge that either of you even exist."

Ced was bitter on his own behalf, not Arthur's, as there'd been some hard feelings around Fee's wedding to Sir Oifaye a few months before. Even though by this point everyone knew that Lewyn was Silesse's former king, and Ced and Fee its prince and princess, Fee went to absurd lengths to avoid so much as speaking with her father and Ced wasn't on much better terms with Lewyn. Arthur half-suspected that Fee'd married someone old enough to be her father just to see if it would make her _actual_ father do something about it, which it hadn't.

Arthur, for his part, felt bitterness in presenting Tinny to her bridegroom only in that he felt like he was losing his sister after hardly being able to _see_ her. Sure, Alster was home to her the way Silesse was home to Arthur, but the idea of them going their separate ways after this war ended just wasn't the fate Arthur wanted. He was tempted to say something cutting, about Fee or her marriage or their bizarre family problems, just to annoy Ced and distract himself from the dull ache he was feeling.

Ced changed the subject first, though. He had an intuition for when Arthur was going to cause trouble.

"Now that you've mastered Thoron, I wouldn't mind the chance to study it."

"Mum marked it up pretty good," Arthur replied.

He didn't really want to let the book out of his hands. If Prince Leif had asked to take a peek of Thoron, Arthur might have given into spite and said no, but Ced was... Ced. Arthur retrieved the tome from its hiding-place and handed it over, doodles and all.

"I see," Ced remarked as he turned the well-used pages.

"It was the only thing she was sure she could hang onto, so she wrote everything in it. When I was born, when Tinny was born... stuff like that."

"You truly were born in Silesse." Ced had found that very page that marked Arthur's entry into the world. Tiltyu had even made a little sketch to celebrate, though she was much better at drawing birds than she was at drawing people.

"Me and Tinny both were. We don't remember anything else. I sure don't remember being on the march with Sir Sigurd's army. The only world I knew was me, and mum, and Tinny, and then one day mum and Tinny weren't there anymore."

"Why weren't you taken by Blume's men? That part of it never made sense to me."

"I was down at Granny Tuva's learning how to read runes. Mum was never that good with them; from what Sir Oifaye's told me, she kind of did magic on instinct, so it was real hard for her to teach it. So she sent me to study with Granny Tuva down the river, and one day I came back from lessons to find our house pretty well destroyed and mum and Tinny both gone."

Ced didn't offer apologies on behalf of the ruling family that'd been powerless to prevent this disaster. Silesse's conquest by imperial troops was another one of those things outside the bounds of any apology. He only closed the Thoron tome with the care of a man to whom tomes equalled life and handed it back to Arthur.

"Hey, Ced. One thing I wanted to ask you..."

"Mm?"

"Your dad. When did he start going funny?"

Arthur saw the green flash as Ced turned his head.

"How do you mean?"

"See, when I was living with Granny Tuva, for a couple of years this traveling merchant would come by. He gave me my first Wind tome- for free- and said he'd come back every season and he wanted me to show him something new each time. So I did. After about three years, I didn't see him again, but I swear he looked exactly like Lewyn."

"Are you alleging that my father, during the period in which he was 'going funny,' used his disappearances to come into your village and monitor your progress as a mage?"

Arthur realized he was skittering across the thin ice now, and this probably wasn't the time to find out what was underneath.

"I guess I'm asking if that was even possible."

"Yes, I suppose it was possible."

And with that, the candles went out.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

A/N: The idea that Lewyn tutored Arthur in secret comes from the designers' notes- another in this weird pattern of the adults being more helpful to other characters' kids than they are to their own offspring.


End file.
